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The Washington Post is publishing a series this week on the dramatic expansion of intelligence spending and lack of oversight. Nine years after 9/11 should Congress and the Obama administration curtail or scale back spending on and expansion of U.S. intelligence agencies, to eliminate redundancies and duplicative efforts? Also, according to the Washington Post series, of 854,000 Americans with top secret clearances, 265,000 are private sector contractors. Is this dangerous for national security?

And does the background of Pulitzer Prize winner Dana Priest's co-author, William Arkin, raise questions about his objectivity? Arkin, a former Army intelligence analyst in West Berlin in the 1970’s, later did stints at Greenpeace International and Human Rights Watch – activist associations that might not pass the classic standard of journalistic objectivity, POLITICO reports.

First of all, we owe a great deal to the two investigative reporters who did the series. Anything to do with the intelligence community is classified. It’s secret. There’s very little discussion of facts and figures and the size and the issues that relate to the intelligence community, which is a sprawling community. They’ve done a superb job.

There is something very wrong if one out of three employed in the intelligence community is a contractor. I say that because it is unprecedented in the history of our country. We are essentially outsourcing our national security. And contractors are more expensive than government employees by as much as 50 percent. And [Defense Secretary Robert] Gates can’t even get an accurate number. These articles really lift the veil off the face of the intelligence community. There is a very strong resistance from the intelligence community and the administration to really come clean, so to speak, as to how many contractors there are, and to get them to scale back. It’s like an addiction.

We need to go agency by agency, pull together the heads of those agencies, and say, this is what you must bring down to, by a certain time frame or Congress will hold the dollars.

Congress itself has given away too much of its responsibilities to the executive branch. I don’t want us to have more power. But Congress does have equal power and it needs to be exercised. Just because it deals with national security should not deter any member to have strong oversight, to hold feet to the fire, and to examine very carefully, regardless of what it is.

Inherently in this and why people don’t know about it is that almost all hearings are classified. Reporters don’t know what members are saying, they don’t know the responses, they don’t know questions that are asked, they don’t know how people are voting. There are an awful number of things that don’t need to be classified. This series of articles are very important and I hope members take this work seriously. This isn’t about damning any one individual. There are so many outstanding people in the intelligence community. I don’t question any of that. What I question is how efficient, smart and effective we are for the dollars we are spending for this sprawling effort that I think really had no oversight and accountability.

There isn’t one agency throughout the intelligence community that has a passing audit. They’re not auditable. Imagine that. And these are significant amounts of taxpayer dollars. Scrutiny needs to be brought to every dollar.

(On charges that the series itself threatens national security), it’s exactly what I would expect them to say. That’s why changes are so difficult to make. There’s always the charge that if you question, if you raise issues that are legitimate and that for some reason says everything isn’t perfect, then you get that reaction. It’s far more dangerous to have this octopus out there that you can’t get a hold of all the tentacles. That’s far more dangerous.

We have a very nimble, very smart, very entrepreneurial enemy and instead of trying to match that kind of model, we have a lumbering model. It’s just layer on top of layer on top of layer. Let’s be smart, let’s be efficient, let’s be effective. Just that one response saying [this series] is not good for our national security … well you’ve got your answer.

[The contracting numbers are] just the tip of the iceberg on a number of issues that arise with looking at who does what. For example, do we need 800,000 people with top-secret clearance? Is that appropriate? How does the government manage the people that it has, and how does Congress do in overseeing management? I would suggest that Congress hasn’t done a very good job of oversight.

I’m concerned about [series threatening national security], but so far, I don’t think there’s been any great revelations as far as endangering current operations and so forth. By being so specific on facilities, you may have increased danger to some of them. I think that’s a legitimate concern. But on a related plain, another key challenge is leaks. [The Post] says all this information was open sources, but still, unauthorized leaks and authorized leaks are a major problem. One of the questions I hope they asked [Director of National Intelligence James] Clapper today is, what are you going to do about leaks? How are you going to get serious about it?

I think there needs to be much more aggressive investigation of leaks. I give the Obama administration credit for that; they are pursuing a leak case now. But for years, there have been just no prosecutions and hardly any effort to investigate. That’s really got to change.

There is a clear indication of the lack of capacity to do effective oversight with these contractors … They are often engaged in what I would call inherently governmental functions and doing things that could in fact, if not done properly, jeopardize our mission. I have focused a lot of my attention on Blackwater in particular, but they’re not the only ones who have damaged the mission, who have put our troops in danger, and who have diminished the reputation of the United States of America.
I think these are national security issues when the government is totally dependent on private corporations whose main interest is making a profit as opposed to the stated mission of our government.

These are companies that rely 90 to 100 percent on taxpayer dollars and nobody is really stepping back and saying, do we really need this? How does this really make us safer? Does this increase our ability to function? I think we need to have many more of these discussions. Now I have many of these discussions on the intelligence committee … they gave an example in this article that after a year they got rid of one contractor out of 700. I don’t know why this is hard.

I guess the bottom line question is are we safer as a consequence, and the only real answer we can give is who knows? We know we are spending a whole lot of money. We know there are a lot of people out there doing work, much of it duplicative. And are we really safer? I would contend that they aren’t making us safer.

The data that they have on cost I think is very telling. I had not been able to really document the fact that we are not saving money by using these contractors. But this article makes that very clear…They just kind of put it all together and I think most Americans are not aware of all the activity.

I’d like to focus in particular on the last one: “According to the Washington Post series, of 854,000 Americans with top secret clearances, 265,000 are private sector contractors. Is this dangerous for national security?”

I address this key question in my book "Shadow Elite." And the findings in my forthcoming report (funded by the Ford Foundation) on "Selling Out Uncle Sam: How the Myth of Small Government Undermines National Security" - based primarily on boring Government Accountability Office (GAO) reports, inspectors general audits, congressional testimony about government agencies - lead one to ask: “Is there any “national” interest in national security?

The national security architecture, with the massive contracting out of critical governmental functions as a cornerstone, potentially makes us less secure. Government has been reconstituted in the last decade and a half, becoming less accountable and compromised in its ability to pursue the “national” in “national interest.” Today contractors are integrally involved in formulating and influencing policy on issues of homeland security, intelligence, and defense. They are positioned to do so to their liking on even the most sensitive, mission-critical government functions. The result is that our safety and security can be jeopardized - and our nation’s sovereignty can be eroded.

For those who think the story of contracting excess begins and ends with Blackwater, consider these findings, based on government data and investigations, GAO and inspectors general reports, testimony from government officials, and the work of some public interest watchdogs and investigative journalists:

Who's running some of our crucial intelligence operations?
A single private company has been called the “shadow intelligence community” by a former CIA deputy director because of its enormous influence. At the National Security Agency, the number of contractor facilities approved for classified work jumped from 41 in 2002 to 1,265 in 2006. A full 95 percent of workers at the very secret National Reconnaissance Office, which runs U.S. spy satellites, are full-time contractors.

Could classified information be at risk?
The revealing title of a GAO report is this: Industrial Security: DOD Cannot Ensure Its Oversight of Contractors under Foreign Influence Is Sufficient. The GAO warns: the agency “cannot ensure that its oversight of contractors…is sufficient to reduce the risk of foreign interests gaining unauthorized access to U.S. classified information.”

Has vital government expertise been drained by big business?
Companies were soliciting active duty intelligence officers during lunch hour in the CIA cafeteria. Some were later banned. CIA director Michael Hayden complained in 2007 that his agency had begun “to look like the farm system for contractors around here.” One reporter said this about top intel officials leaving for the private sector: “It’s a privatization of the highest order, in which our collective memory and experience in intelligence - our crown jewels of spying, so to speak - are owned by corporate America.”

Could government brain drain weaken homeland security?
Managerial and technical expertise is said to be especially lacking at Homeland Security. During fiscal years 2005 and 2006, more than half the senior employees headquarters either resigned or transferred out. Here's a whistle-blower from Homeland Security’s Transportation Security Administration: “There is no one job that requires any knowledge of terrorism. How can you expect a manager [who] has no knowledge of terrorism to run a security office that was established directly as a result of the 9/11 attacks? There are no requirements for staff members of managers to have knowledge of security.”

How dependent is the military on (mostly foreign) contractors while in the battle-zone?
U.S.-paid contractors greatly outnumber U.S. military personnel in Afghanistan and are almost as plentiful as military personnel in Iraq. These contractors supply “mission-critical services,” including “information technology systems, interpreters, intelligence analysts...”

Who runs governmental information technology?
Nearly 75 percent of governmental IT was estimated to be contracted out, even before the major Iraq war-related push to contract out. Government outsourcing expert Dan Guttman, with regard to IT, says: “contractors are not simply the shadow government, but may become the primary government.”

Who runs the databases tracking foreigners as they enter and exit the U.S.?
Accenture LLP does - a $10 billion contract. Asa Hutchinson, undersecretary for Border and Transportation Security at DHS under Bush, said this: “I don’t think you could overstate the impact of this responsibility in terms of the security of our nation.”

Who is staffing important offices? Civil servants charged with protecting the public interest, or contractors employed by companies focused on profits?
The GAO found in some Defense Department offices, the percentage of contractors was 80 percent or more.

Who's overseeing the contractors?
Often it's other contractors. And they even draft official documents. One contractor boasted of having written the Army’s Field Manual on “Contractors on the Battlefield.”

When the government awards contracts, do companies compete as one would expect in a free-market?
Over the past decade and a half, small contracts often have been replaced by bigger, and frequently open-ended, multi-year, multi-million, and even multi-billion-dollar deals, many of which are awarded with no competitive bidding whatsoever.

Congratulations to the Washington Post. Its circulation in the hills of Pakistan and Afghanistan just increased by overwhelming numbers. The TOP SECRET intel series, complete with handy-dandy contractor location maps across the U.S. is now on the must reading list in every Taliban cave in the region.

As stated clearly in the Washington Post, more than a dozen reporters worked for two years on the "Top Secret" series. William Arkin was one of team of journalists who developed this in-depth story, and nothing in his background suggests that he would bend the truth to reach a pre-ordained conclusion.

But all of this begs the more important question: "classic standards of journalistic objectivity"? Much of the mainstream media has long ago abandoned the idea of traditional journalistic objectivity. The best we can hope for is disclosure of potential conflicts, so that the public can make up its own mind. Arkin's background is nothing like NBC correspondent Pete Williams' regular reporting on the controversy surrounding Vice President Dick Cheney and the Valerie Plame leak without the network mentioning that Williams formerly served as press secretary for Cheney and as Defense Department spokesperson during the first Gulf War under then-Defense Secretary Cheney. Or MSNBC's regular use last year of Gen. Barry McCaffrey as an "expert" criticizing the president's announcement of a deadline for pullout from Afghanistan without revealing that McCaffrey serves on the board of directors of a corporation that provides support to the U.S. military in Afghanistan. These are the real and ongoing conflicts that remain largely unreported and ignored.

In the print edition, the Post has given readers no information about William Arkin. His byline is on the stories along with Dana Priest's as if he were another Post reporter working out of the newsroom. Given his background and the feelings he inspires among some people, I thought this was irresponsible at best and duplicitous at worst, and I said so in a note to the ombudsman. He said he would ask executive editor Marcus Brauchli about it.

Let’s not shoot the messenger. It’s hard to argue with the cold, hard numbers The Washington Post spent two years collecting to chronicle the growth of so-called security and intelligence agencies. The articles do not question the need for strong, robust security agencies. They point to the excess and dangers of a government that all too often believes it can solve problems simply by throwing money rather than attempting to intelligently and effectively manage.

If the government considers this effort a jobs program, that is fine. But if it is truly concerned about protecting national security and American lives, it’s time for some serious reassessment. Unfortunately, that will mean more committees, more agencies and more people with top secret clearances investigating others with top secret clearances.

Facts remain facts, even if right wing bloggers find them inconvenient and don’t like the person reporting them or where the reporter did “stints”. And seriously, since when do we use the same terminology to talk about working for progressive organizations as we do for doing time at county penitentiaries – is there not palatable anti-left bias in that connotation alone?

It's never a good idea for a republic like ours to hire mercenaries (that's what these private sector contractors essentially are) to maintain our national security. When push comes to shove, these mercenaries are loyal only to the companies they serve (hello Blackwater security), not necessarily to the nation at large. It for this reason that the practice of subcontracting out intelligence work should be dramatically curtailed or eliminated altogether, regardless of the price tag involved. Otherwise, we may be planting the seeds for an even greater intelligence failure than 9-11.

Oh. My. God. Are we now questioning everyone’s “authenticity” and “journalistic objectivity” in writing about their areas of expertise if they once worked for a group that wasn’t a dying newspaper and doesn’t pass conservative muster? Please. Where the authors once worked or how they voted or what their favorite color is or which flavor ice cream they prefer is completely irrelevant. Either the facts in the story are correct or they are not.

As to the story, what we appear to have is out of control spending on intelligence. Hey, conservative Republicans... why aren’t we complaining about government spending in this area? Do you think this is what the government should be using your tax dollars for? You know, this is where an injection of libertarian thinking into the Republican party would do us all some good.

The tea party is at a crossroads of sorts. POLITICO reports that House Republican leaders are in a quandary about whether to associate with the congressional Tea Party Caucus, organized by Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.).

Meanwhile, a group called the National Tea Party Federation took it upon itself to read California radio host Mark Williams and the Tea Party Express out of the insurgent movement because of Williams’s mocking and racially tinged attack on the NAACP. The move was seen as evidence of the tea party movement’s struggle to purge racism from its ranks. But it also highlighted the threat of infighting among the rank-and-file that could threaten the group's broader fiscally conservative goals.

Are tea partiers doing enough to purge elements from the movement which, like Mark Williams, have made overtly racial remarks? Will infighting among tea party elements dilute the group's efforts at electing fiscally conservative candidates in November?

And are tea party critics trying to tie activists to unsavory elements with whom they have no clear connection? Think Progress on Tuesday wrote about a white New Hampshire State House candidate whose letter to the Concord Monitor was titled “We must preserve our racial identity" followed by a string of invectives that the state Republican party labeled "despicably racist." The writer, Ryan J. Murdough, praised the tea party, but there's no evidence cited about him being a participant int the movement.

The only Democrat backed by the Tea Party Express is rejecting the group’s endorsement because they refused to expel an activist who attacked the NAACP. Rep. Walt Minnick (D-Idaho) sent a letter to the Tea Party Express Monday calling the blog post from activist Mark Williams “reprehensible.”

Lost in the MSM coverage of the recent Mark Williams/TEA Party Express racial flap is this fundamental point: The TEA Party Express, and hence Mark Williams, is not really an authentic grassroots TEA Party organization. As I have discussed many times - and as has been written on POLITICO TEA Party Express is funded, founded and organized by a PAC out of Sacramento which acts as a fundraising arm for the Republican Party.

In other words, the TEA Party Express - which organizes rallies across the country by calling on unsuspecting authentic grass roots tea party members to join in - is the astro turf that critics accuse the entire movement of being.

The wrath of criticism toward the TEA Party for Mark Williams unacceptable behavior should in fact be targeted at select California GOP operatives. Not doing so is to be either acting out of ignorance or is a calculated attempt to yet again demonize the TEA Party movement.

If the recent weeks are any indication it is clear that as November approaches TEA Party critics will continue to try and tie unsavory elements (even those with no direct connection) to the movement.

This attempt, like all previous attempts to discredit, will fail for one reason: It lacks authenticity.

As a decentralized, grassroots organization the TEA Party is doing all it can and should do to police itself. Its message to participants (and one which I have personally declared many times at events): People of all backgrounds are welcome so long a they share the the common values of limited gov't, fiscal responsibility and greater accountability by elected officials to their constituents. Anti-social, disruptive behavior is not an acceptable value.

The greatest risk to the tea party's influence does not come from critics or unsavory elements on its fringe, but instead from within the movement itself. As in any organization but especially so with one which is volunteer and grassroots - you have turf battles, power struggles and personal agendas of ambition.

For a real life example of how these have the potential to dilute tea party influence in November look no further than the June 8 California primary: A total statewide voter turnout of only 13% and grass roots tea party-backed candidates by and large were sent home packing. Meanwhile from Fiorina to Whitman, moving on victoriously to November in most cases were the TEA Party Express backed...or should I say...the GOP backed candidates.

Welcome to the bigs, tea partiers. Major league movements must articulate principles, police their own extremists, and build coalitions to compete in 21st century We Generation politics. As I blogged recently about Progressives, Tea Partiers and We Generation Politics the tea partiers are at a crossroads in 2010 like progressives were ten years ago.

In 2000, GREEN translated to many Democrats as Getting Republicans Elected Every November, with Ralph Nader being the prime example. After the Florida recount of 2000 and Iraq War buildup of 2002 some progressives stayed with Greens, some reclaimed the Paul Wellstone "Democratic wing of the Democratic party" as delegates and founders of progressive caucuses within state parties, a few won public office, many shaped politics through activism, and the most extreme were tied to mainstream Democratic leaders regardless of connection.

Substitute "progressive" for "tea party", "Republican" for "Democratic" - that's where the tea party is today. Some tea partiers will be Ralph Naders of the right, helping to elect Democrats, some will join the "Republican wing of the Republican Party" and others will remain on the fringes, unpoliced or unrepentant. And yes, those on the fringes will be tied to mainstream leaders because defining people by extremist persons and causes is the oldest political shorthand. Just as future President Barack Obama was asked to "reject and denounce" Louis Farrakhan's unsolicited support and aspiring Speaker Nancy Pelosi took impeaching President Bush off the table, so Republicans will be called upon to reject and denounce radical tea party elements and the calls to impeach President Obama.

Tainting the tea party movement with the charge of racism is proving to be an effective strategy for Democrats. There is no evidence that tea party adherents are any more racist than other Republicans, and indeed many other Americans. But getting them to spend their time purging their ranks and having candidates distance themselves should help Democrats win in November. Having one’s opponent rebut charges of racism is far better than discussing joblessness.

The tea party movement is shorthand for Americans who are not committed to one party or the other (independent or non-active in party politics) and have recently been politicized to oppose the tremendous wave of federal spending coming from Washington.

Because they are swing voters, they are doubly important in electoral politics.

In 2006 and 2008, independents voted Democrat, reacting negatively to the unending occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan. Now these same independents are trending strongly Republican as they react against the Reid/Pelosi spending.

Last year, the left was trying to prove that this was all organized by oil companies or Washington-based activist groups. It wasn’t. There is no “leader” of the movement, and yet thousands of local leaders have organized millions of Americans to go into the streets and into town hall meetings to oppose spending.

This latest effort by the left to call everyone who questions Democrat spending a racist just irritates voters already convinced Congress is ignoring their calls for less spending.

The tea party movement -- not individual, well-meaning members -- but many of the leaders and the movement itself, is a roadside bomb set to explode across America. It breeds extremist, intolerant, hateful rhetoric and puts forth many candidates, who if they ever reach Washington, will do precious little to solve our nation's most vexing problems. Those who deny the importance of our civil rights laws, reject help for those with disabilities, want to "phase out" Social Security and Medicare and cut the heart out of government will not be part of the solution. They will be lured by the fame and fortune of taking extreme positions and stand in the doorway of progress. They are a destructive force precisely at a time when we need positive, forward looking leaders who seek to solve problems, not cause them. At the end of the day, moderate, reasonable, everyday Americans will reject this kind of politics.

Peter, if Democrats had not been as equally vituperous toward John McCain's 2008 health care proposal, two-tiered inflation of Social Security benefits and Medicare insurance vouchers as they have been toward the tea party's broader critique of intrusive government, then your point about denial and extremism might carry some weight. What Republicans have learned is that no constructive alternative to big government can be offered by them without receiving the most inflammatory and sensationalist retorts in return. Democratic campaign politics have left no room for the "moderate, reasonable" discussion you claim to seek.

As Yogi Berra would say: It's deja vu all over again. Are the tea parties racist? Is Sarah Palin relevant? The Washington media's fascination with dissecting these two tired topics is starting to border on obsessive. How about: Is Obama doing a good job coordinating the oil spill clean up? No. Is the ObamaCare individual mandate a tax on the middle class? Yes. Is the court-defying Obama drilling moratorium killing jobs and the Gulf economy? Yes.

But if we really want to stay away from policies that affect Americans today, how about something new? The Daily Caller reports that Washington's left-media conspired to keep the Jeremiah Wright story out of the news, talked about shoving fellow journalists heads through plate glass windows, and determined that calling any Republican, including the well-respected Fred Barnes, a racist, was a helpful strategy for the Obama campaign. If anything, this story at least reveals the reasoning behind the left's tea party obsession. Change we can believe in? No, more like Change...the subject.

The NAACP did the country a favor condemning racists in the tea party without calling the party racist. I don't envy Republican leaders trying to harness tea partier energy that is so out of control on issues that decide elections. Can you imagine the first meeting of the Tea Party Caucus, with Michele Bachmann playing the Mad Hatter? Maybe Sarah Palin will "refudiate" it.

Shouting at elected representatives at town halls is one form of political action, voting in like-minded candidates in Republican primaries is another, going along to get along is another form of political action -- and a necessary step if a fringe movement is going to advance into mainstream political responsibility. The tea party's future as a united front will be determined by whether it can attain that last form of political action -- political nuance and respectful respectability.

If not, tea party members will simply recede back into the larger Republican party infrastructure from where they came. And that's OK, too.

The tea party movement does not have to be a party at all in order to be effective, and the efforts of its loosely organized affiliates to expunge overt racism from their ranks speaks to the commonfolk nature and broadly positive intentions of its members. Critics of the movement fear not the tea partiers or the occasional bigot, but rather how pronouncements of its shared political sentiment might tilt the public policy debate and restrain progress toward their notion of a fair society; that is, one where government has a much larger share of the economy and success is valued as little more than an increase in the tax base.

The movement can best sustain itself by remaining a rallying megaphone on behalf of ideas, not candidates or caucuses. Republicans would be advised not to depend upon it and Democrats would be advised not to insult it. Just as internet social communities have become as influential as the major parties in shaping the political thinking of Americans, so the tea party can - and probably will - become an enormously powerful non-party, able to tilt elections with nothing more than systematically shared feelings about the dangers of gluttonous government. The next "flash mob" may take place at the polls in November.

In the 1950s, William F. Buckley created National Review, the house organ of the conservative movement, and quite consciously excluded anti-Semites and racists from the movement. In doing so, Buckley recognized that every movement needs some kind of organizing body to highlight not only what the movement stands for, but also what it abhors. In the current controversy over what the tea party is or is not, Buckley's example is more apt than ever.

Tevi, I very much appreciate this comment. I agree with you that Buckley's standard was right on the money then, and sorely needed now. Debating the issues is important and healthy, and there's plenty of room for debate. Revitalizing the John Birch Society (which Buckley condemned in 1962) is not good for the conservative movement, nor is it good for America. But then again, standards have fallen, as Christopher Buckley, fired from the National Review for being a sensible conservative, has noted.

The tea party is not an organized, coherent movement. It remains unclear how they would purge these elements, or who would be responsible for doing this. The infighting and internal debates will continue — but these debates have been part of conservatism since the 1970s. So there is evidence the tea party can still be effective.

Mark Williams is a racist associated with tea party leadership. The piece cited from Think Progress on New Hampshire’s Ryan J. Murdough states “It’s unclear whether Murdough is a tea partier, but in the comments section of the Monitor’s website, where Murdough is very active , he wrote, “I think the Tea Party movement is doing great things.”” The tea party itself isn’t racist (most tea partiers have issues with Obama’s policies and not his race) but they sure seem to be making the environment more comfortable for those like Williams and Murdough who are - and it stems directly from the nonsense about where Obama was born, which tea party supporters refuse to give up on. The Republican governor of Hawaii notes that Obama’s birth in that state is an established fact and not a debating point. Continuing to debate it encourages an unsavory element that the tea party will be defensive about ad infinitum.

As an important element of the Republican Party, the tea party is responsible for condemning racism where it appears and not promoting it. To their credit, New Hampshire Republicans have swiftly done so with Murdough, but that racism element will continue to discredit the tea party by association. It’s directly responsible for Democrat Walt Minnick rejecting a Tea Party endorsement. But I’ll leave the last word to Democracy Corps with yet more data on tea party Republicans : “The Tea Party is not very popular outside the Republican Party and Republican-leaning independents, and Beck and Palin even less so.”

Laura Halvorsen (guest)
FL:

The "tea party" is a loose-knit association of regular people who are fed up with government irresponsibility, corruption, incompetence and arrogance. Since last summer's town hall meetings, the left has been doing everything in its power to discredit these people - mostly by calling them racist and crazy, the two adjectives favored most by the left in dealing with dissent.

There are two kinds of people that believe the worst about the tea party: those who want to believe it because they despise dissent and those who believe it by default because they're too lazy to research the facts. Instead of showing them respect for speaking out (or, as Nancy Pelosi once called it, "patriotism"), the two parties in power instead show their disdain and desperation by jockeying for position either to slander them or to disingenously pretend to be one of them. It's pathetic that the left carelessly tosses around baseless and hyperbolic accusations of racism in order to distract people from what's really going on. How so very Abigail Williams of them. Yap about tea party infighting all you want (at least it's better than analyzing another one of Sarah Palin's tweets), but one thing is certain: every one of these people will vote in November.

Jon Davenport (guest)
TX:

As if on cue - Prof. Barry calls Republicans, in general, as racist. But only some. I didn't see that label applied to any Dems, wonder why? Sure there are some folks who vote Republican who are undoubtedly racist. Just as there are Democrats of the same ilk.

The difference is the Republicans don't market and stock and trade in the lie that only one party has racist elements. I'd think a person endowed with the privilege of teaching our youth would have the intellectual honesty to recognize and hopefully teach that. But, as proves more often, those who educate don't have the integrity to teach beyond their (often myopic) views. As has been noted by so many guests - the "contributors" in here are as predictable as any given response to an issue by either party. Most of you should stop predicting like you have some special knowledge of advanced view and admit that you are nothing more than partisan parrots repeating the same tired and untrue rhetoric.

Phil Southern (guest)
AL:

Having the most partisan hack in the Arena, Mr. Dworkin, actively working the forum today should tell everyone something about the validity of this debate. Is this topic newsworthy and prescient? Definitely. Does anyone in the media care to cover this as a political ploy as opposed to purveying the Democratic agenda? Not many.

Daniel Shay (guest)
PA:

President Obama just resubmitted Donald Berwick to be head of CMS -- after using a recess appointment only two weeks ago -- and we're busy talking about the tea party again? Find something meaningful to talk about instead of the political equivalent of celebrity gossip.

Fred McDermott (guest)
PA:

If you statist members of the ruling class think that your scurrilous charges of racism are going to shut us up, you better rethink your plans. You idiots are merely making us very angry and our resolve is becoming only more hardened.

So, keep it up. I dare you. Bob Bennett was one of the first of your ilk. He won't be the last.

David Hughes (guest)
NY:

I have been to 11 tea party events. I went there to to document how many non-white people attended those events. I can tell you there was less than three to four people of color for every 5,000 tea partiers.

Todd Bray (guest)
CA:

It's not branding or name calling to identify the deep culturally racist views the tea party routinely exhibits. Being white is no defense either, as you must be the right kind of white person to fit in with this vocal lot of naive extremists.

Rage and temper tantrums are not a majority building ideology unless of course you as a group suffer from undiagnosed type II diabetes.

Eric Morris (guest)
WA:

The point of the NAACP's condemnation of alleged racist elements within the tea party was not meant to advance or mend race relations in the U.S. Rather it was meant to drive a wedge between the tea party and independent voters.

Divide and conquer is the goal and it is explicitly coordinated with President Obama and the Democratic Party. Those perpetrating this wedge know our media will pick this ball up and run with it. POLITICO's forum question is an example of this. This doubles the effect of the wedge because rather than discuss the dire economic condition and outlook that 1-1/2 years of Obama's policies have produced, we are discussing whether the tea party will first be destroyed by its "racism" or its infighting during the run up to the midterms.

The big picture is this: When the left runs out of honest logic to defend its positions it reaches for its hole card: racism. What we are witnessing is progressivism/liberalism collapsing in on itself. The headlines of late 2010 and 2011 will have no choice but to ponder that spectacle.

Scott McManis (guest)
TX:

NAACP: "The Tea Party activists are racist!" The POLITICO echo chamber for liberal policy blasts this non-story for about two days. Yesterday, real evidence of racial discrimination in the U.S. Agriculture Department against its citizens was revealed by video recording of a speech presented to a Georgia chapter of the NAACP.

So grievous is the offense that it is reported that the USDA official resigned yesterday. Even Huffington Post has reported on the resignation. Where is the POLITICO story reporting this? Your forum topics (or lack of topics) reveal your bias and support for the liberal/progressive political agenda. This site/paper/business is little more than a mouthpiece of the political left. I know that POLITICO 'reporters' aren't, but they should be embarrassed by their lack of reporting objectivity.

Linda Conley (guest)
OR:

I agree with Daniel Shay, guest. Why are you still talking, seemingly tirelessly, no, exuberantly, about the putative racist element inhabiting the tea party?

If you are so fascinated with the subject of racism and so hell bent on making sure everyone knows it is thriving in the US, never mind that we have, the people, elected a black man for our president, then why not check out the very group that accuses the tea party of racism?

The NAACP yesterday accepted the resignation of Shirley Sherrod, who worked for the Dept of Agriculture, because while speaking at an NAACP meeting, she explained how she purposefully refused assistance to a white farmer on the verge of bankruptcy.

And while you're examining other aspects of reverse racism that exists, say, among the academic elite around our country, check out Ross Douthat's article, The Root of White Anxiety, in Monday's NYT. Really, with our borders in chaos and our economy not rebounding as the president said it would, haven't we more important things to be discussing this day? Will the left never evolve out of its obsession with identity politics and one day see a person for his character and not for the color of his skin, as Martin Luther King so desired of us?

Pamela McGregor (guest)
GA:

The tea party composition is very interesting. Where are the Latinos, Asian-Americans and other minorities? They claim to be leaderless and not organized; just splinter groups. So far, one of the most interesting stories; the GA leader owes money to the IRS.

She leads a group of people with signs: Taxed enough already. They are paying her taxes. I feel nothing but sympathy for the likes of Sens. Brown, Collins etc. who support legislative measures for jobs and unemployment. The tea partiers are ready to exterminate them.

Don Mayne (guest)
WI:

The tea party isn't about race, it's about America. The NAACP is all about race, it says it with its name National Association for The Advancement of Colored People. What the tea party wants to change is for all Americans not just one color.

Steven Best (guest)
OH:

It appears POLITICO is continuing to endorse the "call them racists" mentality exposed by the Daily Caller today. This isn't working with those outside the Beltway. Focus on issues that matter; this dribble is only a platform for the elitists commenting here.

Linda Conley (guest)
OR:

Branding the tea party racist is unnecessarily divisive and continues to be untrue. Thomas Sewell of National Review discusses the president and his ability to utter nice things when folks want to hear nice things said but that his nice things utterances do not necessarily play out in real life.

Sewell suggests, as shown in this article, that those who had hoped that the election of Barack Obama might help this country transcend the issue of racism may now be very disappointed.

Lee (MMBJack) McCarty (guest)
NV:

The state of the tea party is a symptom of what the Republicans as a whole movement face in November - time and events have caught up with the most conservative radicals in the GOP.

As I have said for months now the Republicans are due for a surprise not unlike the failure for them to witness the "Waterloo" they had hoped for as a turning point in the Obama presidency they dreamed prior to the health plan passing.

They still dream - still confident that a huge lie endlessly repeated will take the place of any facts and rational discourse that once was characteristic of the two parties following an election outcome not of their liking, where the two parties on most critical issues facing the nation have historically given way to bipartisan actions following an election loss - by whatever compromise settled the most urgent and difficult issues of the day that would otherwise be a national setback. This is what will condemn the Republicans this year, tea party, libertarians, and the neocons as guided by Fox and Frank Luntz the doublespeak artist of the big lie policy for defeating the Democrats in November. Too bad, the November election will be a shocker to these dreams of takeover in Congress.by those soon to be discredited.

Ron Amos (guest)
IN:

The NAACP branding of tea party as racist provides yet another example of the reverse bias that this organization and others like it thrive on.

Any allegation of racism, no matter how thin the evidence or how questionable the accusers motive might be is immediately jumped on by the wastrels who pass themselves off as journalists and blasted over the airwaves as news.

Duke's lacrosse team, the congressman who claimed he was spit on and cursed at and later debunked, and now this Department of Agriculture official who just resigned are just the examples that are quickly remembered. Its hard to find any national coverage on the ten people shot at the Black Expo in downtown Indianapolis just a few days ago, imagine the headlines and criticism if that happened at a tea party event.

MIke Black (guest)
NV:

My teacher always used to say that when you point the finger at someone else there are three pointing back at you. This racist finger pointing done by the NAACP, La Raza, Al Sharpton, and Jessie Jackson only further demonstrates their own hypocrisy and racism amonst themselves.

Where is their condemnation of the Black Panthers' comments? or Obama's black green czar who blamed white polluters for killing blacks? These race baiters are nothing more than the Joe McCarthys of the '50s . Nothing they have to say is taken seriously because their hypocrisy is so blatant. They have no credibility and less and less people are listening.

Martin Gray (guest)
FL:

Andrew Breitbart seems to have eviscerated the NAACP with his mini-report on racist elements within that organization bragging to cheers and applause about how to scupper and abuse a white farmer. Between the Obama Justice Department and the NAACP, we seem to have narrowed the gap between political opportunism, racism and the Democrat Party. My advice - clean up your own house before you accuse others of the same racist thoughts and actions you yourselves are guilty of.

Andres Quesada (guest)
VA:

@ Mary Frances Berry "There is no evidence that tea party adherents are any more racist than other Republicans, and indeed many other Americans" Your statement is true albeit slanted in a way that makes me question whether you actually believe the words you spoke.

There's one problem - though the tea party is chock full of Republicans, it also contains in its ranks a great many independent voters, some of them black, Latino, etc. This is the one thing most pundits for the Democratic party or those of far left leanings tend to wash over or just outright ignore.

The idea that voters who once supported the agenda/ideas of Obama could possibly consider any other political party is like a dirty word. It's like saying cancer with a whispered voice, so as to not upset any of the children in the room. The demonization of the entire tea party is a political move, plain and simple. Its failings lie in that Washington politics aren't what drive ordinary people outside the D.C. Beltway. The label will continue to have press coverage, just like reality TV continues to be popular even though it's not particularly enlightening to watch. But much like reality TV, most people know it's fake.

Mark Brownawell (guest)
VA:

The information recently released about postings on JournoList are particularly relevant here. In particular the plan hatched by liberal journalists during the 2008 campaign to change the subject away from Rev. Wright by calling random conservatives "racist". Each and every journalist contributing here should honestly self declare if they are or were a participant on JournoList, did they participate in this smear campaign, or did they denounce it publicly at the time. I think the public has a right to know. As to the current charges of racism, after the evidence about JournoList (and with apologies to the movie "Princess Bride"), racism, you use that word a lot, I don't think that word means what you think it means.

Enzo Medici (guest)
NV:

As an independent voter who voted for Obama, I think the attempt to brand the tea party racist is ridiculous. It seems that anyone who criticizes Obama is called a racist. I don't like what Obama is doing and neither does most of the country.

The Democrats' strategy is going to blow up in their face next election, trust me. No independent that I know who voted for Obama is happy. However, the Republicans really need a strong candidate next election. Palin is a complete lightweight, folks. I would never vote for her. Huckabee strikes me as some religious weirdo, so I wouldn't vote for him either. I could vote for Romney or Gingrich. Hopefully someone else will step out of the shadows and save the day.

David Woolfe (guest)
NY:

Tea party events have much too often been marked by anger and extremist rhetoric. And there have been, at times, racist and ugly imagery. Until the tea party (whatever or whoever they are) denounce and repudiate such rhetoric and imagery, they will be tainted by it.

Anyone who uses such rhetoric or who promotes policies that are based on such positions - whether tea partier, Democrat or Republican - should be relieved of their jobs and/or positions. They have a right to their opinions, but not a right to impose their denigrating standards on the rest of us. Period.

John O'Malley (guest)
IL:

The tea party is not a movement. It is a contrived and Fox News inspired vehicle to help people believe there is angry momentum against the new policies such as the stimulus, which by all accounts helped keep the country from the precipice of ruin. Much of the so called "anger" started the month after President Obama was inaugurated, and then the media fueled the flames (is 2010 going to be like 1994?, etc.).

Tea Partiers are mostly disgruntled white people who are afraid, and indeed "angry", that a black man and woman sleep inside of the White House. I know some, they are former Chicago "Machine" Democrats, who can't stand this fact. They "want their country back". You bet they do. And a small percentage are libertarians, whom I don't disrespect. This has become a joke, and the "lamestream" media is fueling it.

Kathryn O'Mara (guest)
NY:

The tea party controversy is just another sign of desperation by the Democratic party. Whenever they are in trouble, they turn to their tired, old weapon: baseless charges of racism. As Mary Frances Berry points out, Democrats don't want to talk about unemployment or the economy. They'd rather distract than discuss.

Lorenzo Davenport (guest)
GA:

How 'bout them tea partiers. A few months ago the mainstream media types dismissed them as much adieu about nothing. A mere blip on the political radar and not to be taken with any seriousness at all. Time goes by, and the new political group is swaying elections and getting all kind of heat from the left calling them racist among other things.

It appears the Dems' mode of attack is to first categorize and then demonize any potential political threat that comes along. They make fun of them one moment and fear them the next. It just goes to show how truly fragile this bunch is in the White House. In the past this new political group would be called the "silent majority", but now they are the tea party. Bottom line is that these are the people you meet in the coffee shops and malls that are disgusted with the direction of the country and have the guts to try to do something about it. Call them what you want, but racist they are not.

Richard Rosenthal (guest)
AZ:

I find it nearly impossible to figure out what the tea party is for. It is easy to see cosmetic patriotism and anger but there is no coherent, workable policy recommendations.

Long-term structural reduction of America's debt will require the government to make hard choices and be active in reducing inefficiency, energy dependence on fossil fuels, tax breaks skewed for the rich and corporations, and proper investments in our infrastructure, health care security, safety nets and education that usually have a high return on investment historically. I doubt that the tea party can reconstruct the government they want to destroy when they don't even have a blueprint.

Nathaniel Leary (guest)
DC:

I guess we should not put anything with the tag "national security" into the "good spending" bin, along with defense spending, Social Security and Medicare, and tax cuts for the wealthy.

Not only can newspapers not print anything publicly available that terrorists might want to use in the future, they cannot even talk about the amount we spend on these activities. But Republicans know best when it comes to all things money, and all things defense. I forgot. What arrogance from people like Tom Korologos that they have the ultimate recipe to resolve terrorism.

If we want to be secure as a nation, how about we instead spend money on preventing death from things that pose a much more real danger to the American people? Three thousand people died in the Sept. 11 attacks (and how many since then?). The national security mentality posits that death via terrorism is preventable. But isn't death via murder also preventable? Weren't there 14,180 murders in the U.S. in 2008 (and around 78,710 cumulatively from 2003-08)? So really, we need to be protected from terrorists? Really? That is what we NEED to spend our money on?

Lee (MMBJack) McCarty (guest)
NV:

Again, on the bloated and totally messed up post 9/11 "reforms" that created the Homeland Security Department monster out of irrational fear as promoted deliberately to foster support for a needless and diverting effort to redo Iraq to our liking (meaning to the satisfaction of American Oil Companies and the whole fossil fuel energy infrastructure) and which in Katrina aftermath showed the complete dysfunctional nature of this wrong-headed law creating this bad joke now shown to be a total waste.

But how did this really happen? It came out of a neo-con's administration designed to transfer - by unlimited borrowing of non-paid for wars and contracts with favored companies like Halliburton and Blackwater for obvious examples - in short a total raid on the massive ability of the U.S. dollar to endlessly borrow which represented the greatest wealth transfer from the have nots to the already-haves where the have-nots included the whole labor movement and the middle class including small business people who ordinarily create the jobs in our economy - and handed it all (including the tax cuts begun by Reagan and by Cheney-Bush for the ultra rich 1 percent that created the huge deficit they now scream about so hypocritically as "Obama."

Todd Fritz (guest)
GA:

I examined the list in Atlanta. I recognized several companies immediately because they are well-known recruitment and contract placement agencies. The number of individuals who directly work on homeland security is definitely nowhere close to the total number of employees stated.

One company is listed with 2,000+ employees, when in fact most of those are contract resources on site at non-government locations. What is missing for each company is the actual number of individuals who work with top secret information. The number definitely cannot be gleaned from company employment totals, which would inflate the real total by 100.

Daren Martin (guest)
TX:

We need lots of spending on national intelligence but there should also be a review of where those dollars are going. Since the federal government runs those operations, it goes without saying that we overspend.

We need to review and consolidate the intelligence community to get the most bang for our buck. Yes, cut back some of the fat. Mr Dworkin, as a libertarian, I'm all for cutting it back, but at the same time the Constitution specifically outlines that defense of the nation is one of the core responsibilities of the Federal Govt. Where in the constitution does it say specifically the job of the government is to provide Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare or UI? We both know it doesn't.

General welfare of the people is very subjective and open to interpretation, whereas defense of the country is not. As for the racism rants, please. The liberal media proclaimed we were a post-racial nation with the election of our first black POTUS. What happened? The liberal agenda is now compromised and the only way to divert attention from the truth is to play the race card to divert attention away from the failings of the current administration. If disagreeing with the left's politcal and social agenda is being a racist, then I am.

John Kettlewell (guest)
FL:

On the tea party, I wonder what Alinsky would've thought about the current name calling, does it fit in the ridicule rule? Or has it gotten out of control. On the Washington Post - seems like we need another agency to help our secrets remain that way.

Way too much info has gone out, very detailed, very risky for some places that should be secret and some that are probably negligible. Looks like it could and should use a trim, but that fits into the bigger scope that the federal government needs to be streamlined anyway. Prosecute leakers, including members of U.S. Congress. Look at all the people who now want to debate on the substance as opposed to appearance/perception. Ironic that the substance now favors your view but the appearance does not.

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